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roman-writing · 5 years

Text

no end in sight (7/7)

Fandom: World of Warcraft

Pairing: Jaina Proudmoore/Thalyssra

Rating: T

Wordcount: 4,145

Summary: Jaina goes to Suramar seeking aid after leaving the Kirin Tor. An AU exploring the events post-Theramore and Jaina’s recovery during Legion.

Read it here on AO3 or read it below the cut

“But the landscape of devastation is still a landscape. There is beauty in ruins.”

— Susan Sontag, from ‘Regarding The Pain Of Others’

“You will get used to it,” they told her. “Eventually.”

Jaina did not believe them.

The enchanted wrappings were gone, but some days she still felt like an Ethereal. It was something about the ground. Sometimes, even a week after her body had been fully healed, it felt as though the earth did not exist beneath her feet. As though she walked upon a pane of glass above the distant drop of the void far below.

She no longer felt an uncomfortable rush of mana when she stood on leylines, but she still avoided stepping on them for the first week. It was an automatic reaction she could not control, flinching when she expected to be burned. Jaina could not tell if this was made better or worse by the fact that she could no longer physically see the leylines. She could sense their vague location, but it was more like the buzz of a mosquito forever flitting just out of sight.

“Oh, that’s just how it is for us,” Valtrois said when Jaina questioned her about it.

They were standing over a darkened teleportation pad in Oculeth’s corner of Shal’Aran. Oculeth himself was on his hands and knees, attempting to repair the teleportation pad, which had gone dark the day before without warning, the portal anchored above it winking out of existence with a splutter. Jaina and Valtrois had their hands full of various tools, but weren’t paying any attention to what he was doing.

Jaina still wore the enchanted mask. Shal’Aran was bustling with more people than ever. And now that the Nightborne had a reliable cure to mana addiction, the final fight against the Legion began in earnest. Whispers of the Dusk Lily’s insurrection grew into murmurs, grew into shouts, grew into warsongs. High ranking members of both the Horde and Alliance flooded to Suramar daily.

For all her talk to Farodin about choosing sides, Jaina still hadn’t picked hers openly.

“Us?” Jaina repeated. Wordlessly, Oculeth held out his hand, and she placed a mote extractor into it. His fingers closed around the handle, and he continued working with the instrument.

“Us. Nightborne. And, well -” Valtrois gave Jaina the once-over with her gaze. “-whatever you are now.”

“Alive,” Oculeth supplied helpfully. Though he did not look up, he did give the mote extractor a little wave for emphasis.

“She was never dead to begin with.” Valtrois took the mote extractor and replaced it with a scoped barrel forged from leystone ore.

“Technically -”

“No, not even technically,” Valtrois snapped waspishly.

“Technically,” Oculeth continued, undeterred. He mounted the scoped barrel into a hollow section of the transportation pad made by disassembling its metal facing. “One could make the argument that she was neither living nor dead when she was an Ethereal.”

Valtrois looked at Jaina and her voice was flat. “Don’t listen to him. You were always alive.”

All too well Jaina remembered what it had felt like. It hadn’t been that long ago, after all. The sensation of drifting through space and time like an unquantifiable entity, untethered by death or physical feeling.

In a way, she agreed with Oculeth, but she certainly didn’t say that aloud. Mostly because she didn’t want to think about it too hard herself.

A thought struck her, and she said, “And what about now?”

At that, both Oculeth and Valtrois peered at her with curious expressions. Oculeth had paused in his work to answer, “I would wager you’re very much alive, Lady Proudmoore.”

“No, I mean -” Jaina had to pause to collect her thoughts and place them all in neat order. “Nightborne and humans have vastly different lifespans, but you said it yourself: I’m neither here nor there, so to speak. So, what happens now?”

For a moment, neither of them responded. Then, Valtrois tapped an instrument against her opposite hand and said, “The inscriptions make it so that your physical body acts the same way the enchanted wrappings do for Ethereals. They both contain your energy, channel it, and stop your body from further deterioration.”

“Which,” Oculeth added, his words slow and thoughtful, “could also refer to aging. We can’t be sure for certain how long you will live now. As long as other Nightborne? I doubt it.”

“But longer than any human,” Valtrois said.

“Oh, without a doubt,” he agreed. “Could I please have the -? Thank you.”

Valtrois handed him a vial of what appeared to be thick, viscous demon’s blood. It burned with fel-green energy and stank of sulfur when he unstoppered the vial and poured a few drops of its contents down the hollow leyline barrel. The interactions between them were, as always, comfortable. They moved with an ease in each other’s presence, the same way they did with Thalyssra and even with Jaina.

They were the same people, Jaina knew. They moved, acted, and sounded the same, but they looked so completely different. It had been nearly two weeks now since Jaina had been unwrapped and declared stable, and still she had a difficult time reconciling the fact that these people were the same Valtrois and Oculeth who had dragged her into one of the most genuine friendships she’d formed in -- well. Far too long.

Not to mention Thalyssra. But that was different again.

Jaina pushed that nascent thought aside very quickly. Thalyssra was too busy for any sort of nonsense these days. Which is what that sort of dreadful, sinking hope was: nonsense. Nothing good would come of it, Jaina was sure.

There was no getting used to this. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was an unreal existence. She peered around every corner as if expecting something to leap from the shadows. She encountered every good fortune with suspicion. Hope was dangerous. Hope was frightening. Hope had failed her in the past. Hope was not something she had ever thought to feel again. Certainly not like this.

“Is everything alright?” Valtrois asked.

Jaina started. It took her a moment to realise that Valtrois was not speaking to her but to Oculeth.

He removed the barrel from the ground, setting it and the vial aside so that he could study the dismantled teleportation pad and scratch at the top of his head. “On this end everything is fine, but that’s precisely what worries me. It means Thalyssra was right. The teleporter for the Waning Crescent was intentionally tampered with on the other side.”

Valtrois sighed out an elegant and exaggerated, “Fuck.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“So, who did it?” Jaina asked.

Oculeth began putting the teleportation pad back together, sliding the heavy metal plate back into place. “I have an inkling, but we should send one of our Horde friends to investigate inside the city itself. Valtrois, would you update Thalyssra and ask if -?”

“Already on it.” Valtrois was walking towards Oculeth’s heavy work station, and placed the tools she had been holding atop the desk. She did not bother lining them up neatly. She made an abortive movement towards the stairs spiraling beneath the arcan’dor, but stopped. Suddenly, she whirled about, her eyes narrowed, and pointed at Jaina. “Don’t go anywhere. You’re not allowed to leave without saying goodbye.”

Jaina blinked, taken aback. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

Valtrois gave her a knowing look.

Shifting her weight between her feet, Jaina added guiltily, “Not anymore, at least.”

With a suspicious grunt, Valtrois said to Oculeth, “Fix her with a tracking beacon.”

“I said I wouldn’t!” Jaina insisted, indignant.

“That won’t be necessary,” Oculeth said, affixing magnetic bonds to the teleportation plate so that it stayed put.

“Thank you!” Jaina said.

“Those leyline inscriptions of hers have a unique enough magical signature. She’s like a piece of the Nightwell floating around, and -- once known -- that signature could pinpoint her in a crowded street.”

“Good,” Valtrois said, turning to leave once more.

Jaina opened her mouth to protest, but whatever she had been about to say died on her lips. She glanced down at the back of one hand. The runic markings etched into her skin gleamed, infused with their own silvery light that pulsed with every heartbeat.

Ever since the arcane wrappings had been removed, she no longer endured headaches or itching. She could cast spells of any calibre without threat of self-collapse, a theory which she had tested only a few days ago, when she and Thalyssra had gone just south of Moonguard Stronghold for precisely that purpose. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and Jaina’s spellcasting had felt exactly as it had before the destruction of Theramore. Apart from the heightened sensation of mana flowing through every vein, as if the procedure now made her aware of even the barest trace of arcane energy within herself. And perhaps it did.

Oculeth rose to his feet and dusted off his hands. Valtrois had descended the stairs in search of Thalyssra, leaving him and Jaina in relative solitude. As alone as anyone got in Shal’Aran these days.

His usual smile was gone, but there remained a softness around his keen eyes. “You could veil your magical signature so that nobody would be any the wiser. I could teach you, but it would require you to maintain concentration for that duration of the effect.”

Jaina considered that, then shrugged. “So long as you’re the only people who know it, I don’t mind.”

That familiar smile of his returned, but it was small. “Have you asked Thalyssra about why she chose these particular designs for your tattoos?”

“No.” She moved to set down the instruments she was holding beside those Valtrois had dumped atop the workbench. Except Jaina did it with far more care for the instruments themselves. “Does it matter?”

Oculeth answered with a noncommittal hum. “Physiologically speaking? Not a whit. Socially speaking? In vast amounts.”

He moved to stand beside her, and she allowed him to gently take her hand. He lifted it between them. He brushed his thumb against the tattoo on the back of her hand, nudging the cloth of her sleeve up her arm to reveal where the inscriptions wove along her wrist. His own markings stood out against his skin, the contrast stark in comparison to Jaina’s paler complexion.

“To my people, these are signs. Signifiers.” Oculeth dropped her hand. “You’ve been branded. Wouldn’t you like to know what it means?”

Jaina’s fingers curled into a fist. She had to force her hand to unclench. “I’ll be sure to ask next time.”

That was only somewhat of a lie. Jaina was too afraid to broach the topic. In the rare occasions where she screwed her courage to the sticking place, Thalyssra always appeared so busy. Jaina would approach during the day to find Thalyssra engaged in deep conversation with Champions of the Horde and Alliance. During the evening, Jaina stood in the doorway to Thalyssra’s private study two floors beneath the bustle of Shal’Aran, and Thalyssra would be hunched over her desk, so entrenched in her work that she would not notice Jaina’s presence hovering behind her. Once, Jaina found Thalyssra sleeping at her desk, head pillowed by an open book. She still had a quill held loosely between her fingers.

Jaina let her be. Thalyssra did not need any interruption to her already hectic life, what with all the rebel-rousing and insurgency.

It was a flimsy excuse, even by her standards. But Jaina clung to it nonetheless.

That being said, it was a difficult excuse to cling to when Thalyssra approached her instead.

“I’ve been saving this for a special occasion.” Thalyssra held a bottle of arcwine in her hands. It was one of the same bottles that Jaina had brought back from the Twilight Vineyards. That felt like so long ago. “Will you join me?”

Jaina hesitated. She was currently helping Valtrois pass out fruit of the arcan’dor to new arrivals at Shal’Aran. Before she could say anything however, Valtrois took the basket of fruit from her hands and said, “Go. I can do this by myself.”

Jaina went.

“If you don’t want to we can -” Thalyssra started to say, but Jaina shook her head with a smile.

“No, no. A glass of wine sounds lovely.”

Jaina started towards the stairs, assuming they would be heading down to Thalyssra’s private study, only for a hand on her arm to stop her.

Thalyssra tilted her head. “This way. I thought we might go outside for a change. It’s a warm evening.”

They walked towards the teleportation pads in a corner of Shal’Aran. Oculeth was conspicuously absent, his tools lying about. The portal to the Waning Crescent had been restored, but another portal had been sectioned off with a length of silk rope.

Thalyssra ducked beneath the rope barrier. “I asked Oculeth to restrict traffic through this one temporarily.”

And without further explanation, she stepped through the portal. Jaina lingered for a moment. Steeling herself, she followed.

The ruins of Elune’eth overlooked the valley of Meredil. In the distance, the spires of Suramar raked the sky, the Nightwell’s tower foremost among them. The shield surrounding Suramar shimmered in the early evening light like a soap bubble, transparent yet full of colour.

It was indeed a lovely, warm evening. Spring had draped itself across Suramar. New green shoots broke the loam, and the trees were flowering, purple and white. Thalyssra crossed over to a fallen pillar stretched along the ground and strewn with violet-veined ivy.

Jaina blinked. Cushions, and wineglasses, and a plank of light food had already been artfully arranged. Either Thalyssra did not notice her hesitation, or chose not to react, for she sat facing the city view, and unstoppered the wine.

“I don’t know if you realised,” Thalyssra said without turning around. “But you stole a fine vintage for us that day. This has been aged for no less than four centuries.”

They were alone. Jaina cast a quick glance around before removing her mask. Then she moved to sit beside Thalyssra, folding her legs, cross-legged, upon the cushions. She picked up a glass and held it out for Thalyssra to pour the wine. The mask she left on the ground, forgotten. “So, what’s the occasion?”

“The beginning of the end.” Thalyssra poured one glass, and then the other. She gave the bottle a little twist as she stopped pouring, so as not to spill a single drop. She set the bottle aside. “I’ve just received news that good friend and ally has just been rescued from the Terrace of Order. As we speak, the sigil of the rebellion will be flying over his empty cage.”

Despite the apparent good news, Thalyssra lifted her glass towards Jaina in a mocking salute, before taking a large drink.

Jaina turned her own glass slowly in her hands, rotating it by the delicate stem. “And yet you sound less than thrilled?”

Thalyssra sighed. She stared into the tide-dark wine of her glass. “I am happy, of course. Finally, we have sparked the rebellion into a wildfire. With it however comes a whole host of other worries.”

“Such as?” Jaina sipped at her wine. There was a heady slope of warmth upon the tongue, more like a mulled wine absent the bite of hard winter spices.

Reaching into a pocket -- Light only knew where she kept pockets on an outfit like that -- Thalyssra pulled out a folded letter. “I have a meeting with this archmage of yours.” Thalyssra tapped the closed letter against the bowl of her glass. “What was his name again?”

“Khadgar?”

“Yes. That’s the one.”

Jaina frowned and lifted the glass to her lips for another sip. “How could you not remember his name? I thought you two knew each other.”

The tilt of Thalyssra’s head was inquisitive. “I have never met the man.”

“But -” Slowly Jaina lowered the wine. “That can’t be right. He’s the one who arranged my coming here in the first place. And he said he’d asked you about my condition and whereabouts.”

With a vague wave of her wine glass, Thalyssra said, “I received exactly two letters from the Archmage of the Kirin Tor.” She paused, glancing down at the letter in her hand, then added, “Well, three, actually. If you count the latest correspondence from the warfront.”

“You really just took in a known war criminal without question?”

“Look around,” Thalyssra gestured back towards Shal’Aran, “I’ve surrounded myself with known war criminals. It just depends on who you ask.”

Jaina laughed, soft and incredulous, and shook her head. “I spent so much of my time here thinking that you were only doing this to curry favour with the Kirin Tor and -- I don’t know -- earn some of their resources for your own means.”

“The same way you thought I was playing both the Horde and the Alliance against one another for my own means?”

“Well, weren’t you?”

Thalyssra’s answering smile glinted with a sharp flash of teeth. “Oh, yes. But that does not mean we cannot hold two opposing ideas in our minds simultaneously. Cunning does not preclude compassion.”

Being on the receiving end of that look, Jaina could not stop the flush that heated her cheeks. Perhaps it was the wine. She took another drink. As she did so, Thalyssra gazed out towards the city. Despite her smile earlier, she held her jaw taut.

“You’re worried,” Jaina realised aloud.

Thalyssra did not answer immediately. She stared out across the night-washed land, her expression clearly visible even beneath the shadow cast by her hood. She worried the letter with her fingers, bright and nimble and rapping the folded parchment against her knee again and again.

“I have been many things in life. A mage and a teacher before the Sundering. A coward along with the rest of Suramar during the War of the Ancients. A revolutionary only when no other option was available to me. And none of these things help me be a better diplomat.” Thalyssra snorted, a derisive sound. “Most days I feel like a fraud calling myself a leader. What will Tyrande say? My kin of old remember me as one of the Highborne they fought against so bitterly for so long. Worse, they’ll think of my people as relics, ruins of a time when we were great and noble and just, but no longer. How can I possibly convince them Suramar is worth saving?”

Reaching out, Jaina placed her hand over Thalyssra’s to stop her from fidgeting with the letter. Thalyssra’s nervous movements stilled, and Jaina said, "You convinced me that I was worth saving."

Thalyssra snorted softly. "A task for the legends."

"The stuff of heroes.” Jaina looked down at where she stroked the back of Thalyssra’s hand with her thumb. It was easier than meeting her eyes. Even so, when Jaina spoke she could hardly believe the words that came from her mouth. “Even if I might be able to convince Tyrande to drop a ten thousand year old grudge,” she said, "the Kirin Tor have already proven they aren't willing to listen to me. The Alliance are as dedicated to stopping the Legion as any. If all you need to secure their support is to let them think they will be driving away the Legion and destroying the Nightwell in the process, then -”

Jaina let her voice trail off suggestively. Hesitantly, she glanced up to find that Thalyssra was studying her with a veiled expression. “Lady Jaina Proudmoore, are you encouraging me to use the Alliance with the full intention of joining the Horde?”

“I suppose I am.” Jaina grimaced as though a bad taste lingered on the back of her tongue. She tapped her thumb against Thalyssra’s knuckles in faux admonishment before removing her hand. “Don’t make me say it again, though.”

Thalyssra laughed, and the sound was warm, as warm as her gaze. “You’ve come a long way since first we met.”

“Thanks to you. And Oculeth and Valtrois, I suppose,” Jaina added. “Don’t tell them I said that though.”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

“I know.”

Thalyssra tossed the letter aside to refill her own glass, and held up the bottle towards Jaina in a silent question. Jaina held her glass out to be refilled. For a while all they did was drink in peace and comfortable talk, broken only by moments of easy silence. The wooden plank piled with food diminished, and the blunt little knife perched atop it gathered crumbs.

Night began to sweep towards the dimmed horizon, and far-flung stars dotted the sky. Like this, Thalyssra seemed more in her element than ever, cast all in twilight and dusky hues. It was all too easy to remember her as the withered mimicry of herself from not so long ago.

Jaina caught herself staring, and looked abruptly away. She buried her nose in her glass. Beside her, Thalyssra leaned forward to pluck one of the last dark grapes from its vine upon the platter, and eat it. The tattoos upon her arms gleamed in the early evening light.

Mouth dry despite the drink, Jaina said, “Oculeth told me that I should ask you about my tattoos. Do you know what he meant?”

Thalyssra paused, but it was so small a thing that Jaina wouldn’t have noticed if she had not been watching for a reaction. She seemed to mull over her answer. “I told you once that Nightborne have natural markings that are similar across families. That is true. They are hereditary, but unique. They are demarcations of familial resemblance, like height or hair colour.” She reached out to ghost her fingertips across the markings that glowed on Jaina’s cheek. “These are my family’s markings.”

Jaina’s breath caught in her chest as Thalyssra pulled her hand away. “So, every Nightborne who looks at me will think we’re related somehow?”

“In a sense. From what I understand about humans, Nightborne kinship groups are very different. You might call someone a cousin, but we have specific terminology for everyone’s distinct relation to one another. To call Valtrois my cousin, for instance, would be technically correct, but inadequately descriptive.”

“And what would you call her?”

“There is no exact translation. She is my third cousin’s wife’s sister’s niece on her father’s side but my mother’s side.”

Jaina stared at her. “I swear you just said words right then, but Light knows what they meant.”

That earned a laugh. “It means: you have nothing to worry about. The markings don’t have to mean anything, unless you want them to. After all, what other markings was I supposed to give you? I was always under the impression you were going to leave Suramar after your procedures were finished. How many Nightborne would you ever encounter elsewhere that would make this matter?”

The thought of leaving made Jaina’s stomach clench. When she spoke her voice sounded faint even to her own ears. “I could - I could stay. I could help with your Alliance diplomacy.”

"It's kind of you to offer, but that's not why I would want you to stay."

Jaina looked away. She felt a gentle touch at her chin, turning her back to face Thalyssra. Her head was buzzing with warmth and energy, like the thrum of mana beneath her skin.

“This was a bad idea,” Jaina murmured. “I did not think it would affect me this much.”

“The wine?”

“No,” Jaina breathed. “No, not that.”

Thalyssra had placed her own glass aside. One of her hands still lingered upon Jaina’s chin, and her thumb traced a line just beneath Jaina’s lower lip. “I would have you stay of your own accord. Not because you have nowhere else to go. Not because this is the only path available to you.”

Before she could think about what she was doing, Jaina allowed her own hand to drift up and grasp Thalyssra’s wrist. She did not pull Thalyssra’s hand away, but instead held it in place, maintaining that touch. “I want to. Even for a little while. One day I will have to leave, but until then -”

“You are always welcome here. For as long as you would like.” Thalyssra moved her hand to curl her fingers at Jaina’s jawline, the pad of her thumb brushing the corner of Jaina’s mouth until Jaina almost forgot how to breath.

“I want them to mean something. The markings,” Jaina admitted in a rush. “I don’t know what exactly that entails, but I want it.”

Thalyssra smile. Her eyes were twilit, and her words were soft. “They can mean whatever you like.”

“Thalyssra, if you don’t kiss me already, I swear I -”

She did. And for the first time in a long time, sitting amongst the ruins of an ancient civilisation, this was a place that felt like home.

#jaina proudmoore #thalyssra #first arcanist thalyssra #jaina proudmoore/thalyssra #world of warcraft #roman writes #wow #whew finally got that out of the way

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federicodeleonardis · 3 years

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The specificity of artistic languages-as voiced by Glenn Gould and Joseph Brodsky

M. Rotchko, Huston, 1971 and R. Serra, Venezia, 2005

It is a pleasure to lend an ear to two megaphones of the caliber of the two artists cited to get at that colossus (of Rhodes?) that bears the name of Marcel Duchamp. It’s been exactly 34 (1) years since I started my battle, but my bullets bounced off a rubber wall rebounding to the sender. I have to thank heaven if I have come out unscathed so far. The thread of the discourse of the two unravels very clearly in different fields that never touch visual art, but it is also valid for this. Substantiated by very few others (including Susan Sontag and Franco Vaccari), it cannot be dismissed as biased: which, if one speaks of music and the other of poetry?

G. de Chirico, 1913, and Pontormo in S. Felicita, Firenze,1526/27

So let’s keep in mind what JB and GG say about their fields, but let’s ask ourselves why there should be a different discourse in that of visual art. If we give the etymological meaning to semantics and not that of the expression of its content, every interpretation, as Sontag (2) states, is a usurpation, a grand deception. Art cannot exhibit any semantic content separate from its form, because it is exactly this that conveys it. The ambiguity linked to the meaning does not interest us, but the mystery of form does (3). If a plethora of exegetes have strived, with good results for their profit, to give an explanation to the convoluted arguments of the “Frenchman”, this does not justify forgetting that the visual language possesses an autonomy of signs that do not preclude the past and are in search of a future that has nothing to do with the lingua franca, even that of the most distinguished critics, one that does not suffer from a translation. Even mine right now: I don’t pretend to do poetry.

G.B. Tiepolo,Venezia,1757 and Gordon Matta, Paris, 1975

Mine is an effort of collation of arguments produced in the lingua franca by two true artists: each of their own words, carefully chosen by me, can be applied to the green of a Poet’s dream as to the Conical hole of Gordon Matta-Clark or Tiepolo, to the pink of Santa Felicita (or to the Hand that indicates it; who? the Pontormo or Giovanni Anselmo?) as to the black of the Rothko Chapel, to the unbalanced Spiral space of Serra as to the agitation of Erasmus of Narni (who is able to curb it in its stillness?). There are no borders in art, nothing sets and often the classics are revived.

Gordon Matta, NY, 1974 and Federico De Leonardis, Peccioli (PI),1990

Here is the series of promised quotes. I’ll start with Gould. After pointing out Bach’s indifference if not unwillingness to write for a given keyboard instrument, Gould uses terms such as smug, silken, legato spinning resource for his own Steinway. This says a lot about the attention to the characteristics of one’s own expressive language:

Giovanni Anselmo, Pointing hand

Bach’s compositional method, of course, was distinguished by his disinclination to compose at any speciﬁc keyboard instrument. And it is indeed extremely doubtful that his sense of contemporaneity would have appreciably altered had his catalogue of household instruments been supplemented by the very latest of Mr. Steinway’s “accelerated action” claviers. It is at the same time very much to the credit of the modern keyboard instrument that the potential of its sonority—that smug, silken, legato-spinning resource can be curtailed as well as exploited, used as well as abused.

I suspect I may have unwittingly engaged in a dangerous game, ascribing to musical composition attributes which reﬂect only the analytical approach of the performer. This is an especially vulnerable practice in the music of Bach, which concedes neither tempo nor dynamic intention, and I caution myself to restrain the enthusiasm of an interpretative conviction from identifying itself with the unalterable absolute of the composer’s will. Besides, as Bernard Shaw so aptly remarked, parsing is not the business of criticism.

As for the reasons for his abandonment of concert halls for recording ones:

Well, you see, Bruno, I don’t really enjoy playing any concertos very much. What bothers me most is the competitive, comparative ambience in which the concerto operates. I happen to believe that competition rather than money is the root of all evil, and in the concerto we have a perfect musical analogy of the competitive spirit. Obviously, I’d exclude the concerto grosso from what l’ve just said.

Marliave’s mention of “the intimate and contemplative appeal to the ear“ illustrates an approach to these works based upon philosophical conjecture rather than musical analysis. Beethoven, according to this hypothesis, has spiritually soared beyond the earth’s orbit and, being delivered of earthly dimension, reveals to us a vision of paradisiacal enchantment. A more recent and more alarming view shows Beethoven not as an indomitable spirit which has overleapt the world but as a man bowed and broken by the tyrannous constraint of life on earth, yet meeting all tribulation with a noble resignation to the inevitable. Thus Beethoven, mystic visionary, becomes Beethoven, realist, and these last works are shown as calciﬁed, impersonal constructions of a soul impervious to the desires and torments of existence. The giddy heights to which these absurdities can wing have been realized by several contemporary novelists, notable offenders being Thomas Mann and Aldous Huxley.

If you are particularly fond of the last works of Strauss, as I am, it is essential to acquire a more ﬂexible system of values than that which insists upon telling us that novelty equals progress equals great art. I do not believe that because a man like Richard Strauss was hopelessly old-fashioned in the professional verdict, he was, therefore, necessarily a lesser ﬁgure than a man like Schoenberg who stood for most of his life in the forefront of the avant-garde. If one adopts that system of values, it brings about the inevitable embarrassment of having to reject, among others, Johann Sebastian Bach as also being hopelessly old-fashioned.

His opinion on the relationship between the tastes of the time and the eternity of language see the following fragments:

The generation, or rather the generations, that have grown up since the early years of this century have considered the most serious of Strauss’s errors to be his failure to share actively in the technical advances of his time. They hold that having once evolved a uniquely identiﬁable means of expression, and having expressed himself within it at ﬁrst with all the joys of high adventure, he had thereafter, from the technical point of view, appeared to remain stationary—simply saying again and again that which in the energetic clays of his youth he had said with so much greater strength and clarity. For these critics it is inconceivable that a man of such gifts would not wish to participate in the expansion of the musical language, that a man who had the good fortune to be writing masterpieces in the days of Brahms and Bruckner and the luck to live beyond Webern into the age of Boulez and Stockhausen should not want to search out his own place in the great adventure of musical evolution. What must one do to convince such folk that art is not technology, that the difference between a Richard Strauss and a Karlheinz Stockhausen is not comparable to the difference between a humble ofﬁce adding machine and an IBM computer?

The great thing about the music of Richard Strauss is that it presents and substantiates an argument which transcends all the dogmatisms of art—all questions of style and taste and idiom—all the frivolous, effete preoccupations of the chronologist. It presents to us an example of the man who makes richer his own time by not being of it; who speaks for all generations by being of none. It is an ultimate argument of individuality—an argument that man can create his own synthesis of time without being bound by the conformities that time imposes.

But one last examination of this hypothetical piece: let us assume that instead of attributing it to Haydn or to any later composer, the improviser were to insist that it was a long-forgotten and newly discovered work of none other than Antonio Vivaldi, a composer who was by seventy—ﬁve years Haydn’s senior. I venture to say that, with that condition in mind, this work would be greeted as one of the true revelations of musical history-a work that would be accepted as proof of the farsightedness of this great master, who managed in this one incredible leap to bridge the years that separate the Italian baroque from the Austrian rococo, and our poor piece would be deemed worthy of the most august programs. In other words, the determination of most of our aesthetic criteria, despite all our proud claims about the integrity of artistic judgment, derives from nothing remotely like an “art-for-art’s-sake” approach. What they really derive from is what we could only call an “art-for-what-its-society-was-once-like” sake.

The deﬁciencies of this argument arise from the fact that its proponents simply cannot tolerate the idea that the participation in a certain historical movement does not necessarily impose upon the participant the duty to accept the logical consequences of that movement. One of the irresistibly lovable facts about most human beings is that they are very seldom willing to accept the consequences of their own thinking. The fact that Strauss deserts the general movement of German expressionism (presumably, in Rosenfeld‘s terms, the embodiment of “Nietzsche‘s modernism”) should not be more disturbing than the fact that the unquestioned innovator Arnold Schoenberg found it extremely difficult in his later years to fulﬁll the rhythmic extenuations of his own motivic theories. The fact is that above and beyond the questions of age and endurance, art is not created by rational animals and in the long run is better for not being so created.

It would be most surprising if the techniques of sound preservation, in addition to inﬂuencing the way in which music is composed and performed (which is already taking place), do not also determine the manner in which we respond to it. And there is little doubt that the inherent qualities of illusion in the art of recording those features that make it a representation not so much of the known exterior world as of the idealized interior world-will eventually undermine that whole area of prejudice that has concerned itself

with ﬁnding chronological justiﬁcations for artistic endeavors and which in the post-Renaissance world has so determinedly argued the case of a chronological originality that it has quite lost touch with the larger purposes of creativity.

Whatever else we would predict about the electronic age, all the symptoms suggest a return to some degree of mythic anonymity within the social-artistic structure. Undoubtedly most of what happens in the future will be concerned with what is being done in the future, but it would also be most surprising if many judgments were not retroactively altered because of the new image of art. If that happens, as I think it must, there will be a number of substantial ﬁgures of the past and near past who will undergo major reevaluation and for whom the verdict will no longer rest upon the narrow and unimaginative concepts of the social-chronological parallel.

And so it seems to me a great mistake to read into the fantastic transition of music in our time a total social signiﬁcance. Undeniably, there do exist correlations between the development of a social stratum and the art which grows up around it, just as the public manner of early baroque music related to some degree to the prosperity of a merchant class in the sixteenth century; but it is terribly dangerous to advance a complicated social argument for a change which is fundamentally a procedural one within an artistic discipline.

Of course, the early propagandists for atonality pointed with a good deal of pride to the fact that the movement toward abstract art began at almost exactly the same time as atonality, and there are certain comfortable parallels between the careers of the painter Kandinsky and the composer Schoenberg.

But l think it is dangerous to pursue the parallel too closely, for the simple reason that music is always abstract, that it has no allegorical connotations except in the highest metaphysical sense, and that it does not pretend and has not, with very few exceptions, pretended to be other than a means of expressing the mysteries of communication in a form which is equally mysterious.

The figure of Schoemberg outlined by the writings of G is emblematic for understanding the linguistic work of a great composer and his responsibility in the detachment of cultured music from popular music:

But the odd thing about it was that with this oversimpliﬁed, exaggerated system Schoenberg began to compose again; and not only did he begin to compose: he embarked upon a period of about ﬁve years which contains some of the most beautiful, colorful, imaginative, fresh, inspired music which he ever wrote. Out of this concoction of childish mathematics and debatable historical perception came an intensity, a ioie de vivre, which knows no parallel in Schoenberg‘s life. How could this be, then? By what strange alchemy was this man compounded that the sources of his inspiration ﬂowed most freely when stemmed and checked by legislation of the most stiﬂing kind? I suppose part of the answer lies in the fact that Schoenberg was always intrigued by numbers and afraid of numbers and attempting to read his destiny in numbers –and, after all, what greater romance of numbers could there be than to govern one’s creative life by them? I suppose part of it was due to the fact that after ﬁfteen years awash in a sea of dissonance, Schoenberg felt himself to be on ﬁrm ground once again. Still another part of it is certainly that all music must have a system, and that particularly in those moments of rebirth such as Schoenberg had led us into, it is much more necessary to adhere to the system, to accept totally its consequences, than at a later, more mature stage of its existence.

I think there can be no doubt that its fundamental effect has been to separate audience and composer. One doesn’t like to admit this, but it is true nonetheless. There are many people around who believe that Schoenberg has been responsible for shattering irreparably the compact between audience and composer, of separating their common bond of reference and creating between them a profound antagonism. Such people claim that the language has not become a valid one for the reason that it has no system of emotional reference that is generally accepted by people today. Certainly concert music of today—

that part of it, at any rate, which owes a great deal to the Schoenbergian influence—plays a very small part in the life of many people. It cannot by any means claim to excite the curiosity that was generally aroused by signiﬁcant new works ﬁfty or sixty years ego. One must remember that at the turn of the century, any new work by a Richard Strauss or a Gustav Mahler or a Rimsky-Korsakov or a Debussy was a major event not only for the cognoscenti but for a very large lay audience as well.

No matter how little interest there may be in the more signiﬁcant developments of music in our time, I think that there is little doubt that there are some areas in which the vocabulary of atonality—using this term now in a collective sense—has made quite an unobjectionable contribution to contemporary life. It has done this particularly in media in which music furnishes but a part—operas, to a degree (if you can consider styling Alban Berg’s Wozzeck a “hit”), but most particularly in that curious specialty of the twentieth century known as background music for cinema or television. If you really stop to listen to the music accompanying most of the grade-B horror movies that are coming out of Hollywood these days, or perhaps a TV show on space travel for children, you will be absolutely amazed at the amount of integration which the various idioms of atonality have undergone in these media.

Until here: Glenn Gould. Let us now turn to quoting Brodsky. The following fifteen lines (taken from On Grief and Reason) represent an eloquent summary of his thinking on art in general and poetry in particular, as well as on the meaning of the word “language”. Below I have collected other fragments (also taken from Less Than One) that specify its depth and richness. The only fundamental difference with the visual arts is on the affirmation of the inalienability of the word to the semantic value (unfortunately), but with the specification that this does not apply to the other arts.

For poetic discourse is continuous; it also avoids cliché and repetition. The absence of those things is what speeds up and distinguishes art from life, whose chief stylistic device, if one may say so, is precisely cliché and repetition, since it always starts from scratch. It is no wonder that society today, chancing on this continuing poetic discourse, ﬁnds itself at a loss, as if hoarding a runaway train. I have remarked elsewhere that poetry is not a form of entertainment, and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but our anthropological, genetic goal, our linguistic, evolutionary beacon. We seem to sense this as children, when we absorb and remember verses in order to master language. As adults, however, we abandon this pursuit, convinced that we have mastered it. Yet what we’ve mastered is but an idiom, good enough perhaps to outfox an enemy, to sell a product, to get laid, to earn a promotion, but certainly not good enough to cure anguish or cause joy. Until one learns to pack one’s sentences with meanings like a van or to discern and love in the beloved’s features a “pilgrim soul”; until one becomes aware that “No memory of having starred I Atones for later disregard, / Or keeps the end from being hard”—until things like that are in one’s bloodstream, one still belongs among the sublinguals. Who are the majority, if that’s a comfort.

In that, it-life-differs from art, whose worst enemy, as you probably know, is cliché. Small wonder, then, that art, too, fail-s to instruct you as to how to handle boredom. There are few novels about this subject; paintings are still fewer; and as for music, it is largely nonsemantic. On the whole, art treats boredom in a self-defensive, satirical fashion. The only way art can become for you a solace from boredom, from the existential equivalent of cliché, is it you yourselves become artists. Given your number, though, this prospect is as unappetizing as it is unlikely.

Herein lies the ultimate distinction between the beloved and the Muse; the latter doesn’t die. The same goes for the Muse and the poet: when he’s gone, she ﬁnds herself another mouthpiece in the next generation. To put it another way, she always hangs around a language and doesn’t seem to mind being mistaken for a plain girl. Amused by this sort of error, she tries to correct it by dictating to her charge now

pages of Paradise, now Thomas Hard}-“s poems of 1912-13; that is, those where the voice of human passion yields to that of linguistic necessity—but apparently to no avail. So let’s leave her with a ﬂute and a wreath wildﬂowers. This way at least she might escape a biographer.

Of course, when talking about the signs of the word (semanticity) one cannot avoid addressing the theme of the relationship between art and life:

Now, the purpose of evolution is the survival neither of the fittest nor of the defeatist. Were it the former, we would have to settle for Arnold Schwarzenegger; were it the latter, which ethically is a more sound proposition, we’d have to make do with Woody Allen. The purpose of evolution, believe it or not, is beauty, which survives it all and generates truth simply by being a Fusion of the mental and the sensual. As it is always in the eye of the beholder, it can’t he wholly embodied save in words: that’s what ushers in a poem, which is as incurably semantic as it is incurably euphonic.

In “Home Burial“ (Frost’s poem) it results is both. For every Galatea is ultimately a Pygmalion’s self-projection. On the other hand, art doesn’t imitate life but infects it. …

… This is a poem about languages terrifying success, for language, in the ﬁnal analysis, is alien to the sentiments it articulates. No one is more aware of that than a poet; and if “Home Burial”

is autobiographical, it is so in the ﬁrst place by revealing Frost’s grasp of the collision between his métier and his emotions. To drive this point home, may I suggest that you compare the actual sentiment you may feel toward an individual in your company and the word “love.” A poet is doomed to resort to words. So is the speaker in “Home Burial.” Hence, their overlapping in this poem; hence, too, its autobiographical reputation. …

… So what was it that he was after in this, his very own poem? He was, I think, after grief and reason, which, while poison to each other, are languages most efficient fuel—or, if you will, poetry’s indelible ink. Frost’s reliance on them here and elsewhere almost gives you the sense that his dipping into this ink pot had to do with the hope of reducing the level of its contents; you detect a sort of vested interest on his part. Yet the more one dips into it, the more it brims with this black essence of existence, and the more one’s mind, like one’s ﬁngers, gets soiled by this liquid. For the more there is of grief, the more there is of reason. As much as one may be tempted to take sides in “Home Burial,” the presence of the narrator here rules this out, for while the characters stand, respectively, for reason and for grief, the narrator stands for their fusion. To put it differently, while the characters’ actual union disintegrates, the story, as it were, marries grief to reason, since the bond of the narrative here supersedes the individual dynamics— well, at least for the reader. Perhaps for the author as well. The poem, in other words, plays fate.

where that poetry is not a form of entertainment, and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but our anthropological, genetic goal, our linguistic, evolutionary beacon. We seem to sense this as children, when we absorb and remember

For art is something more ancient and universal than any faith with which it enters into matrimony, begets children—but with which it does not die. The judgment of art is a judgment more demanding than the Final Judgment.

Rilke’s Orfeo gives him the cue to clarify his thought on art, which in addition to the close relationship with the meaning of death, arises precisely from the rubbish of life:

This economy is art’s ultimate raison d’être, and all its history is the history of its means of compression and condensation. In poetry, it is language, itself a highly condensed version of reality. In short, a poem generates rather than reﬂects.

For why should we empathize with him? Less highborn and less gifted than he is. we never will be exempt from the law of nature. With us, the journey to Hades is a one-way trip. What can we possibly learn from his story? That a lyre takes one farther than a plow or a hammer and anvil? That we should emulate geniuses and heroes? That perhaps audacity is what does it? For what if not sheer audacity was it that made him undertake this pilgrimage?

A man of my occupation seldom claims a systematic mode of thinking; at worst, he claims to have a system—but even that, in his case, is a borrowing from a milieu, from a social order, or from the pursuit of philosophy at a tender age. Nothing convinces an artist more of the arbitrariness of the means to which he resorts to attain a goal—however permanent it may be—than the creative process itself, the process of composition. Verse really does, in Akhmatova’s words, grow from rubbish; the roots of prose are no more honorable. …

… Art, generally speaking, always comes into being as a result of an action directed outward, sideways, toward the attainment (comprehension) of an object having no immediate relationship to art. It is a means of conveyance, a landscape ﬂashing in a window—rather than the conveyance’s destination. “If you only knew,” said Akhmatova, “what rubbish verse grows from . . .” The farther away the purpose of movement, the more probable the art; and, theoretically, death (anyone’s, and a great poet’s in particular, for what can be more removed from everyday reality than a great poet or great poetry?) turns into a sort of guarantee of art.

The hierarchy between ethics and aesthetics further clarifies his thinking on the relationship between art and life. This applies to all the arts, as the discourse about what art language means also always applies to all:

On the whole, every new aesthetic reality makes man’s ethical reality more precise. For aesthetics is the mother of ethics. The categories of “good” and “bad” are, ﬁrst and foremost, aesthetic ones, at least etymologically preceding the categories of “good” and “evil.” If in ethics not “all is permitted,” it is precisely because not “all is permitted” in aesthetics, because the number of colors in the spectrum is limited. The tender babe who cries and rejects the stranger who, on the contrary, reaches out to him, does so instinctively, makes an aesthetic choice, not a moral one.

Unlike life, a work of art never gets taken for granted: it is always viewed against its precursors and predecessors. The ghosts of the great are especially visible in poetry, since their words are less mutable than the concepts they represent.

In such an absence, art grows humble. For all our cerebral progress, we are still greatly subject to relapse into the Romantic (and, hence, Realistic as well) notion that “art imitates life.” If art does anything of this kind, it undertakes to reﬂect those few elements of existence which transcend “life,” extend it beyond its terminal point—an undertaking which is frequently mistaken for art’s or the artist’s own groping for immortality. In other words, art “imitates” death rather than life; i.e., it imitates that realm of which life supplies no notion: realizing its own brevity, art tries to domesticate the longest possible version of time. After all, what distinguishes art from life is the ability of the former to produce a higher degree of lyricism than is possible within any human interplay. Hence poetry’s afﬁnity with–if not the very invention of—the notion of afterlife.

Poetry after all in itself is a translation; or, to put it another way, poetry is one of the aspects of the psyche rendered in language. It is not so much that poetry is a form of art as that art is a form to which poetry often resorts. Essentially, poetry is the articulation of perception, the translation of that perception into the heritage of language—language is, after all, the best available tool. But for all the value of this tool in ramifying and deepening perceptions-revealing sometimes more than was originally intended, which, in the happiest cases, merges with the perceptions—every more or less experienced poet knows how much is left out or has suffered because of it.

It would be false as well as unnecessary to try to divorce Platonov from his epoch; the language was to do this anyway, if only because epochs are ﬁnite. In a sense, one can see this writer as an embodiment of language temporarily occupying a piece of time and reporting from within. The essence of his message is LANGUAGE I5 A MILLENARIAN DEVICE, HISTORY ISN’T”, and coming from him that would be appropriate.

A great writer is one who elongates the perspective of human sensibility, who shows a man at the end of his wits an opening, a pattern to follow.

Burning books, after all, is just a gesture; not publishing them is a falsiﬁcation of time. But then again, that is precisely the goal of the system: to issue its own version of the future.

Whether one likes it or not, art is a linear process. To prevent itself from recoiling, art has the concept of cliché. Art’s history is that of addition and reﬁnement, of extending the perspective of human sensibility, of enriching, or more often condensing, the means of expression. Every new psychological or aesthetic reality introduced in art becomes instantly old for its next practitioner. An author disregarding this rule, somewhat differently phrased by Hegel, automatically destines his work—no matter what good press it

gets in the marketplace—-to assume the status of pulp.

But to clarify the undemocratic nature of the language, just these sketches taken from some of his most important essays are enough:

Herein, of course, lies arts saving grace. Not being lucrative, it falls victim to demography rather reluctantly.

For if, as we’ve said, repetition is boredom’s mother, demography (which is to play in your lives a far greater role than any discipline you’ve mastered here) is its other parent. This may sound misanthropic to you, but I am more than twice your age, and I have lived to see the population of our globe double. By the time you’re my age, it will have quadrupled, and not exactly in the fashion you expect. For instance, by the year 2000 there is going to be such cultural and ethnic rearrangement as to challenge your notion of your own humanity.

Starting with the authors mentioned above, some may ﬁnd these notes maximalist and biased; most likely they will ascribe these ﬂaws to their author’s own métier. Still others may ﬁnd the view of things expressed here too schematic to be true. True: it’s schematic, narrow, superﬁcial. At best, it will be called subjective or elitist. That would be fair enough except that we should bear in mind that art is not a democratic enterprise, even the art of prose, which has an air about it of everybody being able to master it as well as to judge it.

The evaluation of reality made through such a prism—the acquisition of which is one goal of the species—is therefore the most accurate, perhaps even the most just. (Cries of “Unfair!” and “Elitistl” that may follow the aforesaid from, of all places, the local campuses must be left unheeded, for culture is “elitist” by deﬁnition, and the application of democratic principles in the sphere of knowledge leads to

equating wisdom with idiocy.)

taking inspiration from a poem by W. Auden, B. engraves his thoughts on language:

Time that is intolerant

Of the brave and innocent,

And indifferent in a week

To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives

Everyone by whom it lives;

Pardons cowardice, conceit,

Lays its honours at their feet.

But for once the dictionary didn’t overrule me. Auden had indeed said that time (not the time) worships language, and the train of thought that statement set in motion in me is still trundling to this day. For “worship” is an attitude of the lesser toward the greater. If time worships language, it means that language is greater, or older, than time, which is, in its turn, older and greater than space. That was how I was taught, and I indeed felt that way. So if time—which is synonymous with, nay, even absorbs deity—worships language, where then does language come from? For the gift is always smaller than the giver. And then isn’t language a repository of time? And isn’t this why time worships it?

Uncertainty, you see, is the mother of beauty, one of whose deﬁnitions is that it’s something which isn’t yours. At least, this is one of the most frequent sensations accompanying beauty. Therefore, when uncertainty is evoked, then you sense beauty’s proximity. Uncertainty is simply a more alert state than certitude, and thus it creates a better lyrical climate. Because beauty is something obtained always from without, not from within. And this is precisely what’s going on in this stanza.

But you don’t dissect a bird to ﬁnd the origins of its song: what should be dissected is your ear. In either case, however, you’ll be dodging the alternative of “We must love one another or die,” and I don’t think you can afford to.

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xanthine · 6 years

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Books of 2017

I somehow read more books in 2017 than I did in 2016. Somehow. Here’s the full list of books I finished:

January 1. CBT at Work for DUMMIES by Gill Garratt 2. MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood 3. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher 4. Wild by Cheryl Strayed

February 5. Chalked Up by Jennifer Sey 6. Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher 7. My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel 8. Shockaholic by Carrie Fisher 9. Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel 10. Where am I now? by Mara Wilson 11. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

March 12. Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag 13. Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay 14. The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon 15. Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick 16. milk and honey by Rupi Kaur 17. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

April 18. Love x Style x Life par Garance Doré 19. The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau (audio)

May 20. The Right to Write by Julia Cameron 21. Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin 22. The Revenge of Analog by David Sax 23. Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths 24. Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald 25. One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul 26. The Sound of Paper by Julia Cameron 27. Shrill - Notes From a Loud Woman by Lindy West

June 28. Caffeinated: How our daily habit helps, hurts and hooks us by Murray Carpenter 29. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert 30. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin 31. The Path by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh 32. Still Procrastinating? By Joseph R Ferrari 33. You'll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein 34. The Science Writers' Handbook by The Writers of SciLance (edited by Thomas Hayden and Michelle Nijhuis)

July 35. Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas 36. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett 37. The life-changing magic of not giving a fuck by Sarah Knight 38. Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals by Dinty W. Moore 39. The Shadowed Sun by N. K. Jemisin 40. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

August 41. Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor 42. Works Well With Others by Ross McCammon 43. Rest: Why you get more done when you work less by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang 44. Haldol and Hyacinths by Melody Moezzi 45. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell 46. I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong 47. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell 48. Everyone's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too by jomny sun 49. Son Of A Trickster by Eden Robinson 50. Systematic by James R Valcourt

September 51. When Everything Feels Like The Movies by Raziel Reid 52. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett 53. Hygge: The Danish Art of Happiness by Marie Tourell Søderberg 54. Unf*ck Your Habitat by Rachel Hoffman 55. Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel 56. The Upward Spiral by Alex Korb 57. Too Much And Not In The Mood by Durga Chew-Bose 58. The Spooky Art by Norman Mailer

October 59. Beauty Queens by Libba Bray 60. The First Time I Got Paid For It… Writers’ Tales from the Hollywood Trenches edited by Peter Lefcourt and Laura J Shapiro 61. My Boyfriend Barfed in my Handbag... And Other Things You Can't Ask Martha by Jolie Kerr 62. The Last One by Alexandra Olivia 63. The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker (audio) 64. Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard 65. Hunger by Roxane Gay

November 66. When Watched (stories) by Leopoldine Core 67. The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey 68. The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin 69. Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire 70. The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

December 71. All Inclusive by Farzana Doctor 72. We Are Never Meeting In Real Life by Samantha Irby 73. Next Gen PhD: A Guide to Career Paths in Science by Melanie V Sinche 74. Turtles All The Way Down by John Green 75. the sun and her flowers by Rupi Kaur

#books of 2017 #a year of books #charts will go in a separate post because this is already way too long #65 of these 75 books are from the library #libraries are the BEST

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#sontag spiral

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2019 could have been written by Gary Shteyngart. The president tried to buy Greenland this year. Who could have imagined reading that sentence four years ago? In 2019 the septuagenarian president’s staff photoshopped his head onto the body of a young Sylvester Stallone and then got all huffy when none of us believed it was real. In 2019 an Oscar-nominated actress went to prison for paying someone to sweeten her daughter’s SAT score. 2019 gave us an eight-way tie for first in the National Spelling Bee. Twenty-eight different people decided to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2019.1 In 2019 Jeffrey Epstein–credibly accused of sex-trafficking minors to a number of high-profile men–died while in police custody, spawning a thousand different conspiracy theories that spanned the entire political spectrum.2 Britain and Israel both spent most of 2019 trying to sort out who should run the countries and neither of them seem to have come up with a satisfactory answer, although Britain did manage to find time in its busy schedule to yell at its newest duchess–a biracial divorced American–for various imagined transgressions. In 2019 someone inexplicably agreed to marry Stephen Miller.3 And it wasn’t just the news that was weird: in 2019 my personal life was also extremely–well, let’s just say eventful. In April, right before the Game of Thrones premiere, my husband and I were smugly congratulating ourselves on weathering some family medical storms when we got a phone call that sent everything spiraling into chaos all over again.4 And still there was more: If you had told me on January 1 of 2019 that in less than a year I would be living in a different house in a different city with a different job, I would not have believed you. And yet here we are. And so in 2019 I used reading mostly as an escape: with a couple of exceptions, I responded most strongly to non-fiction that allowed me to imagine a different reality and fiction that held out the prospect of a happy ending or, failing that, that offered me a pleasantly whimsical world to inhabit for a few hours. 2019 was not a year when I went in search of deep character development or narrative realism or emotional truth. In 2019 I wanted to play pretend. Do not take that to mean that my favorite books of the year offered nothing more than escapism. No, the best books gave me everything: a different world, yes, but also beautiful prose and vividly drawn characters and original thoughts that made me put the book down and stare dreamily into the distance. What these books all have in common is that I’m still thinking about them now, weeks or months after I read them. The list, in the order that I read the books:

Bowlaway, by Elizabeth McCracken. It’s about candlepin bowling, and family, and marriage, and love. Some people didn’t like it because it isn’t super-plotty, but I loved hanging out with McCracken’s characters

L. E. L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron”, by Lucasta Miller. If you read Miller’s The Bronte Myth, then you know to expect great things from her latest. I have never been a scandalous woman, to my eternal regret, but this book let me imagine what it might be like to be one.

Golden State, by Ben Winters. I have been a Ben Winters fan since his Last Policeman trilogy. In this book he pays as much attention to plot and story as he does to world-building and the result is a captivating thriller in a world where lying is one of the most serious crimes you can commit.

City of Girls, by Elizabeth Gilbert. Look, I get it, Gilbert is not everyone’s cup of tea. But I love her characters and I found this book wildly engaging, a story about a fun, naughty girl who unashamedly loves sex. It reminded me a bit of Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet, but to be totally honest, I enjoyed this one more.

The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, by Brenda Wineapple. Does impeachment even matter if the president is not removed? In this account of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, Wineapple makes the case that it does. She must have started this book before January 2017, because there’s a lot of research here — but it still made for awfully comforting reading while the debate over the current president’s impeachment swirled.

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood. A follow-up to Atwood’s classic novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Is there a bit too much fan service in this novel? Does Atwood channel Katniss Everdeen to an excessive degree? Yes and yes. I loved it anyway. I liked the way Atwood bounced off the television series, making some plot points canon while refashioning others, and you know what, the hopeful ending may not be realistic but I’ll take it.

Sontag: Her Life and Work, by Benjamin Moser. There are few things I love more than big fat literary biographies. This one is smart and insightful and well-written, and will make you–as Jamaica Kincaid says–never want to be great. Sontag was a marvelous writer who was also a toxic parent, friend, and lover, and this book will make you consider, among other things, whether the one was worth the other.

Olive, Again, by Elizabeth Strout. OK, this one wasn’t escapism so much. On the other hand I think this is the first time I’ve ever had a best book list with two sequels on it.5 Maybe in 2019 I was trying to travel back in time? At any rate, this is Strout’s follow-up to Olive Kitteridge, a collection of short stories centering on one difficult woman that was my favorite book of 2008. The first book was insightful about love and marriage; this one is insightful about old age, loneliness, and coming to terms with yourself as you approach the end of your life.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, by Patrick Radden Keefe. This is a pretty amazing account of a murder in 1972 that would only be solved thirty-plus years later. I cared about the victim, and I especially cared about her children, and I even found myself caring for the murderers. Along the way I learned a great deal about the IRA and “The Troubles,” about which I knew virtually nothing before.

The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, by Corey Robin. I have been angry at Clarence Thomas since I watched his hearings in my dorm room in 1991.6 Now that I have read Robin’s analysis of Thomas’s judicial philosophy, I am not less angry, but I do take Thomas more seriously as a thinker. Robin’s argument is that far from being a faint echo of Antonin Scalia, Thomas has developed his own strain of conservatism grounded in black nationalism. Maybe this is not an uncommon thesis among Supreme Court watchers–I don’t read legal journals so I don’t know–but it was new to me and I found it fascinating. Another book that wasn’t really an escape to a different world, but there’s nothing I like more than a fresh perspective on a subject I thought I’d made up my mind about.

1 Although that may seem like a humorous exaggeration, it is the actual number. 2 I have to be honest, you guys, I think he probably killed himself. 3 This seems like a life mistake on par with marrying Anthony Weiner, but the heart wants what it wants. 4 Pro tip: Never smugly congratulate yourself on weathering a storm! It only tempts the universe. 5 It’s probably also the first time my list has featured three Elizabeths, but I haven’t actually checked. 6 I am also still mad at Joe Biden for the way those hearings were run, but that’s a story for another day.

My very favorite books that were published in 2019, featuring two sequels and three Elizabeths. 2019 could have been written by Gary Shteyngart. The president tried to buy Greenland this year. Who could have imagined reading that sentence four years ago?

#Ben Winters #Benjamin Moser #Brenda Wineapple #Corey Robin #Elizabeth Gilbert #Elizabeth McCracken #Elizabeth Strout #Lucasta Miller #Margaret Atwood #Patrick Radden Keefe

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micaramel · 5 years

Link

Artist: Lucy Bull

Venue: High Art, Paris

Exhibition Title: First Meetings

Date: September 6 – October 10, 2019

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release, and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of the artist and High Art, Paris

Press Release:

In a mescaline induced hallucination lasting weeks on end Sartre ascribed crabs to his visual apparitions. Day after day a pack of little crustaceans followed him around the streets of Paris prompting him to seek advice from a young Lacan who inscribed the creatures further as representations of the loneliness that accompanied the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Tea leaves, clouds, ink blots; the compulsion to Know the Abstract is grand and hard- wired.

Once painting discarded the need for subject and content, once Sontag persuaded us against interpretation in favor of sensual experience, the remainder of this descriptive foil still falls on the shoulders of ‘Abstraction’: A neatly packaged linguistic default for that which is not-yet scribed with meaning.

Dear Abstraction, what is your source? You concede to a subjectlessness, but I’m not convinced. If visual stimulation is deprived for long enough a ‘prisoner’s cinema’ casts a screen of abstract prismatic projections.

The Surrealists were keen to hack this place of non-form by way of automatism and yet being conjoined to the interpretive project of psychoanalysis, they didn’t linger in the formless for long.

“Had a transcendental storm of colour visions today in the bus going to Marseilles. We ran through a long avenue of trees and I closed my eyes against the setting sun. An overwhelming flood of intensely bright colors exploded behind my eyelids: a multidimensional kaleidoscope whirling out through space. I was swept out of time. I was out in a world of infinite number. The vision stopped abruptly as we left the trees. Was that a vision? What happened to me?”

-1958 diary entry from painter Brion Gysin

Along with collaborators and advancements in neuroscience, Gysin deduced that a light flickering at a twenty hertz frequency is similar to the waves of a non-aroused brain. Using a record turntable, sturdy paper cut with slits, and a lightbulb, Gysin invented what would be known as the Dreamachine in Paris’ Beat Hotel.

Gynsin aimed to create a space for the functioning of thought outside of control.

Lattices, cobwebs, spirals, tunnels… These primal geometries define the Form Constant.

Delirium of fever, a near-death experience, from waking to sleeping and back again, psychotic breaks, electrical stimulation, sleep deprivation, drug induced intoxications… The diversity of conditions that provoke entropic patterns suggests the Form Constant reflects some fundamental property of perception.

No cultural contingencies. No history. No future.

Like Sartre’s crabs, the viewer eventually must locate herself reaching for familiar shapes, faces, figures, or places to transcribe onto such visions.

“If you managed to look into the very heart of a thing you would see that it is the same As your own self’s”

-Wols

First Meetings: The fact that these common abstractions, hallucinations, and visuals are universally accessible interlock our experiences as we mentally relocate our consciousness to that of the other.

Like intimacy with a stranger, the familiarity of this shared psychic space is recognized in the other as alarmingly canny to ourselves. This fundamental connection spirals infinitely entangling intersubjectivities.

In the paintings on view cocktails of contending colors are applied in porous layers. Biomorphic vapors expand until meeting the corners and cannibalizing inward.

Light and pigment build, condense, spiral, melt, feather, tunnel, break, and radiate with the pre-symbolic energy of Abstraction.

Marie Heilich

Link: Lucy Bull at High Art

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2lkKwLF

#micaramel

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barshadnia-blog · 5 years

Text

Essay 2- The Power of a Picture

Benyamin Arshadnia

Professor Coy

English 110: FY30

October 13, 2018

The Power of a Picture

Many pictures have become controversial topics of discussion these days. In the chapter “In Platos Cave” by Susan Sontag and the essay “In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life” by bell hooks, the authors discuss many benefits photographs offer to society. Both authors agree that photos have become an integral part of our society. There is countless evidence in our society that agrees with these authors and I myself agree with them as well. Photographs have a unique power to them and when used properly can be extremely beneficial. In my opinion, we can learn the following: photos are a political instrument, photos empower the subject, a photo can give a person or groups of people power over their own narrative, photographs give over information to others, and that photos can be used in a positive or negative way capitalistically.

A particular example of this is when a big controversy spiraled out of control this past September. It all started when Nike published an ad featuring Colin Kaepernick, a professional football quarterback player. The ad itself is a black and white with a deep focus on his face. Kaepernick is pictured with a quote saying “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The picture they used gives off a very powerful vibe through Kaepernick’s serious face. This ad caused a huge uproar and got a lot of attention by the public far and wide, including people such as the president, Donald Trump. Police brutality against African Americans has been a debate in society for a while and anyone who speaks out against it receives major backlash. Kaepernick began protesting police brutality against African Americans back in 2016 by “taking a knee” during the national anthem. “Taking a knee” represents standing up for something, in this case police brutality against African Americans. This sparked a huge controversy due to the fact that people got very upset that Kaepernick and his fellow football players were all taking a knee during the national anthem, thereby disrespecting the country and the anthem. This all shows how powerful a picture is and specifically how powerful this picture is.

Photographs can be used as political instruments in many ways. hooks mentions the political power of images against racism and how “the camera became in black life a political instrument, a way to resist misrepresentation as well as a means by which alternative images could be produced.” For the first time ever, blacks were able to defend themselves against racist white people. Using photos politically, blacks were able to show the world that they were people just like everyone else. Here too, by Nike’s ad with Kaepernick, a picture is used as a political instrument in our society. The ad not only displays Kaepernick’s opinion on the issue, but also Nike’s opinion as well. Police brutality against African Americans has been an ongoing issue for years and Kaepernick finally got it the attention it long deserved. When Kaepernick started kneeling during the national anthem, he was saying to the world “I don’t support a country that doesn’t do anything to protect its people”, this is a huge political statement. Therefore, when Nike published the ad, making it well known to the world exactly what Kaepernick was doing, they knew the image would spark a huge political uproar. The picture went so far as to attract the President’s attention. The president made many comments on in the issue saying how Kaepernick was “disrespecting our country” by kneeling. Without this picture, Kaepernick wouldn’t have gotten so much political attention on the issue.

Additionally, photos also empower the subject. hooks mentioned that: “[he] can confess that those walls of photographs empowered [him]”. In my opinion, what hooks is referring to, is the fact that for once, blacks had pictures of themselves and it gave them the power to keep fighting for their rights. They saw that they were no different than anyone else and that they shouldn’t stop fighting for what they believe in. The same is true here with Kaepernick. When the ad was posted, he got so much attention for it and people were passionately persuading him to continue, thus empowering him to continue. What gave him more confidence as well was when other people such as his fellow teammates and random people started following in his footsteps. This all proves that having a photograph of something can empower the subject regardless of what they are trying to accomplish.

Photographs also give a person or people control over their narrative. Sontag agrees with this and says that “photographs furnish evidence” which can be used to set a narrative. When you have a picture of something it sets the tone for what you are trying to convey. For example, if you have a picture of a person eating a pie of pizza while talking to a dietitian, you set the narrative that the person is not being intelligent. hooks brings a similar example of how “the camera was the central instrument by which black folks could disprove representations of [themselves] created by white folks.” This shows how a photograph sets the narrative for you. If one posts a picture of something, they can photograph it in a way that it conveys a narrative they are trying to convey. Here too, by Kaepernick, he is trying to control the narrative by being pictured saying “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The picture and quote is a representation of him and what he is trying to show the world. Without a picture of it, it wouldn’t have given over “the quality of feeling” (Sontag) as just saying it. The ad shows that he is really going all in for his beliefs and that he is motivated to see his mission through. This sets a very positive and confident narrative on what he is doing.

Photographs can be a wealth of knowledge as well “because they give information” (Sontag) on the topic that is pictured. The phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” is a very famous and true slogan. Society has become dependent on information being given over by photographs. They are used by “spies, meteorologists, coroners, archeologists, and other information professionals” (Sontag) for information. Photographs are used as evidence as well by the police in the convictions of people. The ad of Kaepernick offers a lot of information to us. It tells us that Kaepernick truly believes in what he is fighting for. Another thing we learn from this ad is that Nike is supportive of Kaepernick in his mission against police brutality. Also, when someone sees the attention a picture is receiving it notifies them that there is some deeper meaning behind it and that they should research it.

Additionally, photographs can be used for capitalistic advantages as well. Today, everything “[needs] to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs [which is] an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted” (Sontag). This creates many advantages for capitalists. The main advantage being, free advertisement and marketing. When a celebrity wears a new pair of sneakers and posts it online everyone starts to believe that they need it in order to be “with it”. This causes them to go out and buy those sneakers regardless of the price because they feel that they need to be “with it”. One can say that Nike was taking advantage of Kaepernick and used him to gain publicity and increase their sales. As soon as Nike published their ad of Kaepernick, their stock prices “hit an all-time high” (CNBC) and their company increased in value by six billion dollars. Another advantage Nike saw through publishing this ad was a huge increase in activity on all their social media platforms.

Although photographs mainly benefit capitalists in a positive way, it can affect them negatively as well. If a company posts a photo of something and the overall majority of people disagree with what the picture is saying, they can face severe consequences for posting it. Nike played a huge gamble in posting the picture of Kaepernick. If the majority of society didn’t agree with the message they were trying to convey, they could have suffered a huge financial loss. And indeed many people did protest against Nike for posting the ad; some even went to extreme of burning Nike products and posting it on social media. Another negative impact of the ad that could’ve occurred was with Kaepernicks team. Many of the fans could have started boycotting the team by not buying their products and tickets to their games. Although, as we have seen, Nike did not take such a negative hit from the ad, rather they benefited from it.

In conclusion, it is revealed that photographs have many unique powers to them and they can be used in many beneficial ways. The Nike ad of Collin Kaepernick puts what Susan Sontag and bell hooks say into reality. The ad shows how photographs can be used as a political instrument in our society. Self-empowerment is another benefit we see from photographs which is demonstrated by Kaepernick with his attitude towards his mission. Additionally, controlling a narrative is another major power of photographs that we see through this controversy. Also, photographs give over information that we can’t receive elsewhere and are an invaluable asset to society. Lastly, we can see the major impact photographs have on capitalists through the ad of Kaepernick and the impact it had on Nike. All in all we can see that photographs have a unique power to them which cannot be received elsewhere and when used, can be extremely beneficial to someone or something.

Works Cited

hooks, bell. “In Our Glory.” Art on My Mind: Visual Politics, The New Press, 1995, 54-64.

Sontag, Susan. “In Platos Cave.” On Photography, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977, 1-19.

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